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00:00Hey, what's up you guys? Marty Schwartz here with Marty Music. Thanks for checking out this video.
00:04I want to talk about when you get a song stuck in your head. I'm sure you know what I'm talking
00:09about. You listen to a song a few times and then even minutes, hours later, you're doing the dishes
00:15or doing something else and that song just pops into your head. You ever wonder why that happens?
00:20Well, curiosity got the better of me and I set out for answers. I linked up with Dr. Carol
00:25Schirling, a neuroscientist from Belmont University here in Nashville, Tennessee. We sat down and
00:31talked all about earworms and the neuroscience behind what happens when a catchy tune gets stuck
00:37in our heads. Carol's intimate knowledge of the brain made for a really interesting conversation.
00:42I think you guys are going to dig it. Let's start the show.
00:49Tell me a little bit about your background, like as far as your field.
00:52So my background is in what's called behavioral neuroscience. In particular,
00:57I've studied cognition. So what are things we notice? What are things we don't notice? Or what
01:02are things that make it into our brain, but we didn't even realize they made it into our brain?
01:06I also study emotions. So the effect of emotions on what we remember, how it can modulate our mood
01:12and how does music play into that? Well, everything, right? You notice notes, you notice sequences of
01:17notes. You notice a song makes you feel happy or a song makes you feel sad.
01:22And so all these things together, music is a wonderful tool to incite an emotion,
01:27but also to just study, you know, what are differences between clinical groups and healthy
01:32groups. Nice. This particular video, we're calling it sticky lyrics. Yes. Okay. You know,
01:38like the idea of very simple song getting stuck in your head or, you know, or a jingle. One of my
01:44favorite jingles is El Pollo Loco because it's one note. El Pollo Loco. That's right. Can't forget it.
01:52Yeah. So what's going on with, with sticky lyrics? What's going on with music getting stuck in your
01:58head? The clinical term we use is involuntary musical imagery. What's happening in this case
02:03is you are essentially reciting the same song in a sub vocal way. And sub vocal is going to be used,
02:10not just for lyrics, but also for the notes. And so what we noticed in studies. So there's
02:16different types of scans. One is an fMRI. FMRI measures blood flow. Think about if you're running
02:21a marathon. Okay. If you're running a marathon, you would need blood to flow to your legs. So you could
02:26propagate forward in the marathon. The same thing happens in the brain. If you're using a part of the
02:31brain, you need blood flow to increase to that part of the brain. Okay. And that's what we measure
02:35in an fMRI. Okay. And so when we have people who are talking about, I have this earworm, what we're
02:42seeing is an increase in the areas that you use when you're actually listening to a song. It's called
02:49the A2 area, the secondary auditory. And so they use this area of the brain when you're listening to a
02:55song and you're making sense of the song. But when the song isn't there, that area lights up again.
02:59So it is literally like your brain is still listening to something, even if you don't have
03:05the stimuli there. Okay. So it's almost an analogy here because I'm not a scientist, but like a muscle
03:12that's been working. And it just keeps working. And then when you stop, your heart's still beating,
03:18your body, you know, and it slowly comes back down to pace. No, it's not lit to the same. It doesn't
03:24have the same level of blood flow as if you were listening to something. But that same area that
03:29processes sound is still processing the sub vocal sound for yourself. And so if I'm focusing on the
03:36fact that I can hear it in my head, that continues. Continues it. That must that part. Absolutely.
03:41To keep flowing. Thus, wow, you're a good teacher because I actually understand what you're saying.
03:47So there's some also something else in the brain called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons. Mirror neurons.
03:52Mirror neurons. Right. It sounds very futuristic. There's this story that we hear in neuroscience
03:57about how they were discovered. These Italians went for lunch, came back with ice cream, and they were
04:02looking at their monkeys who had sensors in the motor cortex. Oh, okay. Okay. And as they're eating
04:08their ice cream, they notice their monkeys are having reactions. Them watching the movement led to
04:14their neurons firing. Okay. And so it's the same idea. If you're an athlete, watching someone else do
04:21a triple axel, watching yourself in a game, or even thinking about it, you actually activate those
04:28neurons. Okay. And so a musician can do exactly the same thing. If you start thinking about the song,
04:33it can activate the mirror neurons. And that also happens with these sticky lyrics. Not only are you
04:38activating the auditory, but you might actually be activating the motor, the finger movements,
04:44or we were talking about rush earlier, the drum rolls. Right. And so there's, there's a lot of other
04:51brain regions that come into play to make it a, not just an auditory experience, but a holistic
04:56experience, which is what music is. Oh, wow. That's, that is really, really cool. Okay. So what's the
05:02process going on that leads to the song and lyrics being stuck in your head where it's out of your
05:09control? Okay. Basically, if we're going to talk about why we get them, we should talk about some
05:14of the features of the music itself that leads you to be attracted to them. Yeah. This is where I'll
05:18take notes because I can, yeah, this is how you can rule the world. The secret. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
05:22Yeah. There's a lot of studies that have looked at, um, the concept of earworms. The problem is,
05:27is that there isn't a lot of literature on out there because they happen so fast. Yeah. The
05:33majority of these are pretty benign. They're positive or neutral. The ones we remember though,
05:37are the negative times. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I still remember in high school, what's new pussycat? Man,
05:42that's just went over and over in my head. I don't remember all the positive times. Yeah. Yeah.
05:47They usually come into our brain when we're idle. You've heard it recently. You see something in your
05:52environment. Maybe you're doing chores and your brain kind of needs to keep the stimulation up. So you'll get
05:56them, but the features of the songs that lead you to get them fast tempo lyrics, 74% of them are
06:03lyrics based. It's extra data for our brain. Exactly. It's an extra cue. I know. Look at you.
06:09You're a neuroscientist now. So it's an extra cue for your brain. Not only do you have a note,
06:14but you also have a lyric attached to every note. There's two ways that can be prompted in your brain.
06:20Um, jingles are about 15% and I think instrumental is then about 11. So that's the kind of prevalence.
06:27So if you want to get in someone's head, music and lyrics really, really make a difference. So as I
06:32said, fast music and lyrics, there's also the idea of you want to go up and then down. Think twinkle,
06:38twinkle, twinkle, little star. That you go up and you come down. So a rise and a fall that tends to
06:51stick. Most songs that are earworms will have that rise and that fall. All right. I want to get deeper
06:56into rise and falls while I've got my guitar plugged in. All the basic melodies we hear are coming from
07:04a scale. The most popular one is the major scale, which is the do, re, mi scale.
07:17And so the rise is hearing and recognizing the pattern of that set of notes, the rise.
07:26So our ear picks up and hears and wants to go along for that ride. I always think back
07:34to my friend, Tim Pierce, who's one of the most recorded session guitar players to ever exist from
07:40Michael Jackson to Bruce Springsteen, back and forth. He's played, recorded on all these different
07:44albums and played on hit songs. And he told me that the most famous melodies are like nursery rhymes.
07:50And that relates to that rise and fall as well. And so a perfect example of that. And it's also one of
07:56the first things you learn on guitar is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It's got a note from the scale
08:02that rises up and then climbs down the stairs. So.
08:07It went up.
08:19And now here's the climb down the scale.
08:29And it's going to repeat that to really set it in the wheels in motion in that brain.
08:34And it's going to go back to the original just to glue it all together.
08:48Another thing with the rise and fall that I immediately think of is one of the best and most
09:12loved guitar players of all time, BB King. If he was playing a blues.
09:21One of the most famous things he would do would be play a lick, but then do a rise up to the octave.
09:27It's that same phenomenon. And I'll show you what I mean. You'll hear it right away. You'll know.
09:31As soon as I do it, you're going to know. Here it is.
09:45And so that is how the earworm begins. The rise and fall creates a loop in your brain. And you start
09:51hearing that note and it makes connections. The descending, the ascending, the rise and fall.
09:59It just stimulates and gets things going and starts massaging it in there.
10:04And so going up and down, it's easily sung. We like things. We remember things that we can easily
10:10hum to. And you know, if you have the sequence of going up and that sequence of falling down,
10:15instead of just jumping all over the place, it's more memorable. And you remember it. Repetition.
10:20So we were talking earlier, My Sharona. Seven notes in a row for My Sharona. That's weird.
10:27You don't have that in a ton of songs. So repetition plus a little bit of quirkiness,
10:32that also makes a big difference on how you're going to remember it. It's going to stick out.
10:37One of the worst offenders or best offenders, the way we want to think about is Lady Gaga.
10:40Bad romance. I don't even know how to sing it, but that like,
10:44rah, rah. So she has weird and up and down all at the same time. Poker face, same thing,
10:50Alejandro, all of those. When they did a study, three of her songs were in the top 10 out of all
10:56the songs out there. Super fascinating. Yeah. And we can talk about her having
10:59synesthesia at another time, which is blending colors and music together.
11:04All right. More ways of it getting stuck in your head. Familiarity.
11:09Okay. Familiarity. The more you've heard it, the more likely it is to stick in your head.
11:13And this comes down to memory theories. So we learn by what's called chunking.
11:17We did a video with your colleague, Nicole.
11:19Who talked about that. She talked about chunking.
11:21Yeah. And so for the musical experience, you want chunking, right? Because you wouldn't be able to
11:25process that two minutes of a song all in one. Musicians are a little better at that because of
11:30the training and so forth, but you want to take like a piece. Now, why does repetition come back?
11:36Well, if you repeat the same chorus multiple times in a song, guess what? You've chunked that.
11:41You'll remember that a lot better. And then you might put it together with the intervals in between.
11:46The more a chorus is repeated in a song at every time it's repeated, there's a 7% chance it makes
11:51it to top 40. And then it will then increase the chance of it being an earworm. Gotcha.
11:58So familiarity, repetition. So that kind of plays hand in hand. And then there's the emotional content
12:04of things. So if a song aligns with your current state, if you are sad, guess what you're more
12:11likely to have is an earworm. Yeah. A sad song. Okay. And it's because again, when we encode some
12:17things, we encode with a lot of different features, the sound, the lyrics, the sense of the song.
12:22Uh-huh. And that's another thing. If you're sad, you're suddenly searching in your brain for things
12:28to either reinforce your current state or to get you out of it. Most of the time we're glutton for
12:33punishment and we try to reinforce the current state. Those are the factors that really lead to
12:38the creation of earworms. What would be the best way to get it out? Get it out. Like what's the,
12:44can we, can we reverse engineer this process? There's lots of things, but none of them have guarantees.
12:49I saw a meme about like, just sing happy birthday in your head or there was something like that.
12:54Replacement. Thanks. Do something else. So sing something else. So if you have, for example,
13:01I'm going to go back to my what's new pussycat and I'm probably going to have this in my head later
13:04today. I have to be like, okay, um, I need something else. So I can think of any of my son's
13:10kid song that gets stuck in my head. And I would just sing that one instead going, this one's bugging
13:14me more than this one. So let me try to get this one instead. So replacement. Replacement.
13:18Talking about it with someone else. Catharsis, right? Getting it out there, talking with someone
13:23else. The weirdest one that's out there, but has some success is chewing, chewing gum, chewing food.
13:29Is it distracting that part of your brain? So it kind of comes back to the idea that
13:34if you are listening, particularly for with a song to lyrics and it's kind of going over in your head,
13:39you're doing what we were talking about sub vocalization, right? So you might be engaging the
13:43motor cortex with those mirror neurons by chewing the gum. You might be decreasing that activity
13:49related to the song because you're using it to actually masticate the gum. Is it successful in
13:54everyone? No, but it's nice to have that as an arsenal. Yeah. Okay. So getting, uh, earworms out of
14:00your head, we've got replacement, you know, singing another song, play another song or just chewing some
14:05gum gum, man. Yeah. Just get it out there. Activate your motor cortex. And then there's the whole idea
14:11that peppermint can actually spark more. So now I'm wondering. Yeah. So peppermint can actually spark
14:17better memory. So I'm wondering if you were to combine chewing and thinking of another song,
14:21if it would be more effective. Good stuff. I don't know. There's other things like imaging imagery.
14:27Um, if you are a vivid imager. Okay. Um, and a lot of artists are right. Imagine yourself going in your
14:34brain and pulling out the song. Not everyone's good at that. I know I would not be, but there are
14:39a lot of people who are really good at the imaging stuff. And then there's also distraction. So do
14:44something else. So stop trying to stew. The more you stew about the song, the more it's going to stay
14:50there. Yeah. This is called the suppression rebound. And then the last thing is to grin and bear it.
14:56Listen to the entire song. Cause when you have an earworm, it's usually just the chorus or just the intro.
15:02So instead force yourself to listen to it over and over again in entirety, not so vocally,
15:08but listen to it. Sometimes that's enough for your brain to be like, okay, I've processed it now.
15:13Let's get rid of it. Okay. So are there certain people that are actually more susceptible to the
15:17earworm or actually stronger against it? Everyone's susceptible. Um, as we talked, 99% of people will
15:24report having it, but there are people who are more prone. Musicians are one of them. We've mentioned that.
15:30And it's likely just because they're around music. They're not just consuming other people's music.
15:35They're producing their own music. And I definitely know my ears are more open
15:39to music. You're more tuned to pick up on these things.
15:42Always deconstructing or hearing or breaking it down.
15:44Yeah. So you notice more. So you have more to trigger you to having one of these people who
15:50are a little bit more on the higher on the neuroticism scale and people with obsessive
15:55tendencies tend to also have a little bit more of this. It's the idea that you perseverate on something
16:01and an earworm is a perseveration. Yeah. Research also shows that females tend to be a little bit more
16:08affected by it, not by frequency. So male and female will show the same frequency by bite duration. So
16:13when it sticks, it sticks for longer. Interesting. And when you're stressed.
16:19And when you're stressed, you're more prone to the negative ones, which just adds to the stress.
16:23Let's have fun. Yay. So good.
16:26Well, Carol Sherling, I just want to thank you again for this great conversation.
16:31Thank you. Really, really interesting.
16:33I can tell you're a really good teacher because you were leading me along and actually everything
16:38made sense. Music is such a huge part of our lives today. Thanks to streaming platforms and social
16:44media, we're constantly exposed to songs. So I hope having a better understanding of why a song gets
16:49stuck in your head gives you a little more protection from songs you can't stand. And just
16:54maybe if you get a good song stuck in your head, you'll always have a song in your heart. Thanks for listening.
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